[Lifestyle, mental health, and awareness of health among Japanese bus drivers].

To examine lifestyle, mental health and awareness of health, a self-administered questionnaire survey was performed among 751 employees of a bus company in a rural city of Japan. From 597 (79.5%) respondents, we analyzed 130 male bus drivers and age-matched 130 male clerks. The questionnaire included eleven questions about lifestyle and mental health, three questions about awareness of health, and questions on personal concern about specific parts of the body or diseases, and health information they needed. Answers for lifestyle and mental health were classified into the categories of "good" or "not good" practices recommended by Breslow and Morimoto. The results were as follows; 1) Over 80 percent of subjects of both groups had good awareness of health, but bus drivers had significantly worse lifestyle with regard to nutritional intake (p < 0.05), daily walking (p < 0.001), sports (p < 0.05), and sleeping hours (p < 0.001). 2) Bus drivers had significantly greater prevalence of concern about their cardiovascular system, esophagus and gastrointestinal system, and joints and bones than clerks (p < 0.05). 3) Bus drivers had a significantly greater need for information about nutritional intake (p < 0.001), and methods for prevention of diseases (p < 0.01). From these results, the discrepancy between awareness of health and lifestyle seen in this study, especially in food intake, walking time, sports participation, and sleep, may have resulted from the bus driver's characteristics of job, for example, long and irregular working hours. Therefore, effective guidance on health and lifestyle changes to restore balance and improve their lifestyle.

Vibration transducer using an optical cavity comprising birefringent mirrors.

We have developed an optical-cavity system comprising birefringent mirrors for a vibration transducer. To obtain a dispersive-shape signal necessary for reading out the information of mirror vibration, we measure the polarization change of the cavity transmission light caused by the natural birefringence appearing on interferential mirrors; this effect is enhanced by the cavity resonance. Since there are no additional polarization-changing elements inside the cavity, we can achieve the high finesse that is indispensable for a highly sensitive vibration measurement. The principle and an experimental demonstration of the system are reported here.

Nanosecond time-resolved infrared spectroscopy distinguishes two K species in the bacteriorhodopsin photocycle.

The photochemical reaction process of bacteriorhodopsin in the nanosecond time range (-120-860 ns) was measured in the 1400-900 cm-1 region with an improved time resolved dispersive-type infrared spectrometer. The system is equipped with a newly developed detection unit whose instrumental response to a 5-ns laser pulse has a full width of the half-maximum of 60 ns. It provides highly accurate data that enabled us to extract a kinetic process one order of magnitude faster than the instrumental response. The spectral changes in the 1400-900 cm-1 region were analyzed by singular value decomposition and resolved into three components. These components were separated by fitting with 10- and 1000-ns exponential functions and a step function, which were convoluted with the instrumental response function. The components with decay time constants of 10 and 1000 ns are named K and KL, respectively, on the basis of previous visible spectroscopy. The spectral shapes of K and KL are distinguishable by their hydrogen-out-of-plane (HOOP) modes, at 958 and 984 cm-1, respectively. The former corresponds to the K intermediate recorded at 77 K and the latter to a K-like photoproduct at 135 K. On the basis of published data, these bands are assigned to the 15-HOOP mode, indicating that the K and KL differ in a twist around the C14-C15 bond.